Chinese Authorities Detain 130 At Revival

August 25, 2000|By ERIK ECKHOLM The New York Times

BEIJING — One-hundred and thirty evangelical Christians, including three from the United States on a religious mission, were arrested in central China on Wednesday as they attended a revival, according to a human rights monitor and the three missionaries' pastor in California.

The raid was part of a continuing pattern of arrests, fines and other harassment of house churches, mainly evangelical Protestant groups that have quietly spread their faith to tens of millions of Chinese while refusing to accept the authority of official religious bodies.

It came one day after a top leader of the government-sponsored churches told an audience in Los Angeles that religion in China had entered a "golden age" of freer expression.

The detained Chinese are followers of the China Fangcheng Church, which claims more than 500,000 members and is one of the largest of many Protestant groups that meet and evangelize across the country without government approval. Such groups often receive encouragement and financial aid from like-minded churches in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Evangelicals in the United States say the beliefs and practices of the Fangcheng Church fall well within the Christian tradition. But Chinese authorities have labeled it and several other similar groups as cults and in December sent two Fangcheng leaders to "re-education through labor" camps.

On Thursday night, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it had not yet confirmed with Chinese officials that three citizens were in police hands but that it was sending a consular officer to the area. Under an agreement, China must inform the embassy within 96 hours when a U.S. citizen is detained for any reason.

Earlier this year, when a supporter from the United States of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group was detained she was quickly deported.

The mass arrests were first reported by the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. On Thursday, a police officer in the township where the raid occurred, Dawangzhuang, in Henan province, confirmed that a large number of worshipers were being held but would not say where.

Often in such cases, most of those detained are soon released, but leaders sometimes face stiff fines or imprisonment.

The detention of the three missionaries, all of them Taiwan-born immigrants, was confirmed Thursday by a pastor of their church, the Chinese Vinyard Church Fellowship in Los Altos, Calif.

Henry Chu, 36; his wife, Sandy Lin, 28; and Patricia Lan, 25 -- traveled to China on Aug. 13 for a two-week mission in support of China's Christians, the pastor said.

Chu, who has lived in the United States for 15 years, has an engineering degree and also completed seminary school, the pastor said, and volunteers much of his time to church work. Lin also graduated from college and a seminary and is a paid employee of the Vinyard Church Fellowship. Lan is a third-year seminary student.

They have made similar trips to China, the pastor said, adding that his church annually sends four or five small groups to China.

Foreign missionary work is illegal in China, though informal outside aid to churches is sometimes tolerated.